Fiction cliches you hate

I read mostly crime and thriller.Can't bear books that take the first hundred pages to describe the landscape. Thick frost, frozen lake, snowy trees, onto the action please.Detectives that drink lots of coffee and work all night but somehow seem to actually work very little

It has to be reasonably subtle though. None of this 'Sheila snuggled up to Paul thinking what a good friend he was ... and how sexy his gorgeous tall, muscular body, square jaw, and 'unconventional' good looks were ... she hoped he would find someone to love the way she loved that total wanker Derek whose paunch was beginning to show ...'.

I really hate when there's a conversation in a book just to help the audience keep up, where the whole of it is characters in the middle of something really busy reminding each other what has just happened.

Your pupils do expand when you're attracted to someone, though (or so several decades of popular science documentaries have told me. And also we find people more attractive when they have slightly enlarged pupils) so there's at least a sensible basis for that one.

I agree with Bunty about dreams. Particularly "The Box of Delights". Most of the magical kind of stuff happened similarly in the first one of the series "The Midnight folk" so why did that have to be a dream . Ruined a good book for me there.

Also two things that drove me crazy in children's books growing up. Firstly where the characters go "ooh this might happen" (as one possibility of several) and make preparations for that one event, which just happens to be the one that does happen.Also books that have the hero/heroine just about to be in danger and every time that is the moment where something happens to stop the danger. I preferred to miraculously escape the danger.Famous Five was particularly bad at that-madman waving a whip around, and the police happen to turn up at that moment and madman decides to sit down calmly. Hang on, you've just said he's lost his reason, I think he'd probably go more spare when the police arrived? Interestingly EB didn't really do that with the adventure series.

"I really hate when there's a conversation in a book just to help the audience keep up, where the whole of it is characters in the middle of something really busy reminding each other what has just happened."

Oh yes I know exactly what you mean. The phone rang. It was her friend Anne. "How are you feeling since you lost your job due to your boss trying to kiss you at the Christmas party and you turning him down? Are you upset about being jilted at the altar a year ago?"

Has no one else noticed the coffee thing? Detectives drink so much more of it than the rest of us, it's so much stronger than we'd have it. If its from the works machine, it is the worst coffee ever but they still drink it. Sometimes they call it 'java' and at that point I stop reading.